


Vices & Virtues

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were too busy flying. And now they were too busy falling.</p>
<p>(or in which Liam is an angel who loses his wings)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vices & Virtues

“Feels like God is crying,” The angel says, letting his friend pull out another slick wad of bloody feathers from his hollow-boned wings. The room is silent and still, hot against the summer heat, and the two boys sit in the dim light and pull softly; daring. The wings are furling outwards, ragged remains of flesh and tiny bones and sinew. Five foot long creatures looking like the ugliest, more terrible kind of beauty against the angsty background of a high school bedroom.

The friend snorts in reply, trying to ignore the angel’s tears sliding quietly onto the comforter. He’s got the downy white feathers in his hands, blood stained and sticky against the white of his palm. They’d tried cutting the wings off at the roots but to no avail; the bones were too small against the thin-skinned membrane. The only way was to pull them apart one agonizing feather at a time.

He lets them fall against the trash bag, the quiet thud sounding like a bomb as each feather makes contact with the plastic. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, truly repentant. They’ve been friends for years, ever since Zayn saw him stumbling around in a hailstorm out on the turnpike. They were little back then and the wings were only seeds against pale flesh. Zayn’s mother had taken Liam down the police station and a woman with red-rimmed eyes had picked him up, sobbing and praying in relief.

They’d been friends ever since.

But the heat of this past summer must have caused the wings to bloom their delicate flower overnight; huge and explosive across Liam’s sheets. At first they’d enjoyed the beauty – two best friends with the most solemn of secrets in their mouths. Their parents were off on a mutual vacation in Spain and they had the house to themselves. They’d meant to have parties where they’d hook up with pretty girls they’d probably never speak to again, but they didn’t mind that that had never happened. Knowing that the angel had wings was much more interesting.

They were too busy flying.

And now they were too busy falling.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” The angel breathes and Zayn turns on the radio, tuned to a station neither of them really recognizes but they’re really too occupied to care and it’s really only there to drown out the sounds of Liam’s pain. The music hums in their ears as Zayn pulls and pulls, a razorblade in his right hand for when the feathers cling insistently against pallid flesh, begging him not to sin.

It’s like a warning from God, Zayn thinks. He works in little ways.

“God can’t save us now,” Zayn mumbles in reply, trimming and hacking in time to the beat of song playing on the radio. Liam shivers and smiles, jaw locking from the waves of nausea rolling down from his spine. He’d always been the good one of the pair with his gentle manners and the mild upbringing. He was an angel in every sense of the word. Zayn, however, was not. He was the artist with the messy hair, the boy with a cigarette tucked behind his ear and too many complexes. Wings would never fall onto his back. There’s a dull glint of metal from the blade and Liam whimpers against his hands as more of his – or maybe God’s – glory gets ripped from his flesh.

They could have saved themselves — could have told their parents – the wings were proof enough in themselves that something was happening. But there was too much fear in both boys’ eyes as they surveyed the brilliant wingspan, the plumes of innocence and false reality. The angel was Zayn’s best friend and, before he was angel, Liam was just a boy – a sinning, seventeen-year-old with a filthy mind. He was just like Zayn only younger and more naïve. He couldn’t bear to enter the lonely concrete of high school without the angel by his side. Zayn couldn’t bear life knowing that Liam could wind up trapped, being experimented on or locked in the walls of the Vatican being worshipped by someone other than himself. No, he would much rather the angel go through this pain and then walk in the ways of the sinners and the commonplace.

Maybe that made Zayn selfish but it was worth it.

The wings are de-feathered and bare when Zayn takes a damp washcloth and rides it against the angel’s skin, fragile drops of blood rolling down and falling in streams. It’s okay, Zayn needs to change the sheets anyways. They were going to do it in the bathroom, but this seemed big in their eyes. Like pouring acid on a kind soul, they were attempting to destroy something that could maybe not be undone.

Some rituals were worth blood stained sheets.

“This is where it’s going to probably hurt.”

Zayn retrieves the knife from its place on his desk. It’s a kitchen knife. They’d sharpened it up so maybe the slicing would come easier. Liam had joked that they could perhaps have wings for dinner. Neither of them had laughed, but if they had it would have been hollow.

Hollow like the brittle bones.

Hollow like the bass in the speakers.

Hollow like the feeling they get when they know that the wings won’t stop them from doing what they’re too scared to do.

They’re too scared to sin, but they blame it on the wings.

Zayn takes a shuddering breath before placing the knife against the thin skin at the root of the wing. “You sure you don’t want to get drunk first?” He offers, digging the tip into the base of the wing. Now that they’re bare, Zayn could see what he was cutting. They weren’t heavy and aching with feathers; just slick and tilting with blood.

It would be fast; easy.

Liam laughs blandly against the walls, letting the sound reverberate. “Just do it,” he says, his thin chuckles fading into a groan.

The skinny bones and wilted flesh come off easy. They look veiny and small in their thin, naked remains. There’s hardly any blood at all and both boys watch in awe as the bones turn to powder and sand and the skin dries up like cracked leather. All that pain for two seconds of a cut and the angel is a boy once again, all shaky smiles and shitty tattoo of a heart decorating his hip.

They put the bones and skin into a cup and place it on a shelf in Zayn’s basement. Stripping the sheets, they give each other tired smiles knowing that things can be the same again. They can pretend these past two weeks never happened.

Only it doesn’t feel the same – even If they take away the wings Liam is still an angel. They should have realized that before Zayn’s hands had ripped out Liam’s shreds of beauty, those wings of valor and principles.

For the first time since they sprouted, the ex-angel slips on an old T-shirt and the wings can no longer get in the way of his sins in the form of clothing. They lie wistfully and Zayn wants nothing more than to cry and let the boy next to him cry as well. He wants to hold the angel; to reassure him.

Their mistake seems so blatantly obvious in the late afternoon; so dirty and filthy and caught up in the moment.

But the angel doesn’t want to miss his best friends last year of high school and he doesn’t want to miss that cigarette smoke in his hair and in his clothes. And Zayn, well, he wants the same. They want to convince themselves that it’s worth it, but they know it’s only worth it if they have courage and the guts to sin; to fall out of their somewhat religious upbringing and into each other. That’d almost make thoughts of Hell taste sweet.

And the artist, he wanted to sin. The sin of the ages, the sin of touching and caressing the same sex of skin. And those wings made things too hard, too frightening and absurd and overt of a reminder that it was something very wrong and very dirty indeed.

And his lips find those of his best friend and Zayn rethinks dirty.

Because the tearing of wings will always be worth it.

Because angels can make even the filthiest of sins clean.


End file.
